


Reclamation of Agency: Three Meditations

by Hagar



Series: On Becoming [1]
Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Character Analysis, Consent, Gen, Meta, Morality, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 14:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5542745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three short, loosely connected vignettes on the theme of agency in season 01 as reflect through Dutch, her and D'avin's relationship, and both theirs and Johnny's relationships with Pawter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reclamation of Agency: Three Meditations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [undeadstoryteller](https://archiveofourown.org/users/undeadstoryteller/gifts).



> Adapted from [these](http://hagar-972.tumblr.com/post/129785578354/the-thing-is-dutch-is-perfectly-capable-of-being) [two](http://hagar-972.tumblr.com/post/129282472064/dutchisall-hagar-972-hagar-972-we-need-to) posts.

"Here's how it works," Dutch tells D'avin halfway through s01e04 _Vessel_ : "Treat people like chattel, make them fight for approval, and they will always turn on one another in the end." The reason Dutch says this is her concern over the monastery girls' possible reactions (when they find out the team is there to save only Constance, and not all of them). That, however, is not the entire context: "I grew up in a place just like this," Dutch says, and so frames her insight as more than a tactical assessment, but also a confession and more important than that, a warning about Dutch herself.

 _I grew up in a place just like this, and I survived._ This warning is the first personal thing Dutch reveals to D'avin. There's a reason for that; Dutch and D'avin are both aware of it, and they needn't speak of it in words even once. D'avin had been an enlisted soldier all his adult life. He's never had to be responsible for his housing, clothing food and time, and he's only had minimal input into his occupation. He thrived in that environment; invalided out, he ended up in indentured service in no time. D'avin has no idea how to conduct himself in a civilian society; no experience managing his own life; no sense of purpose (nothing he's interested in or wants to do beyond solving the immediate problem of his missing memories). He is, in other words, _vulnerable_ , easy prey to anyone who could offer him psychological and physical safety. Dutch understands that fully. It's unlikely D'avin grasps that fully, but he does have a grasp of how much power Dutch holds: after all, she's - for all intents and purposes - his employer, his landlord, the person who fought for him even when his own brother didn't, and the person said brother trusts implicitly.

"[The girls are] really, really scared," D'avin counters, his words quick with conviction and hot with emotion. It could be his protective streak, setting him to see charges where Dutch sees obstacles, but there's another possibility. D'avin isn't naive, after all; and when responding that quickly people tend to think from their own perspective - that is, to project. Some military environments can be similar to a royal harem or a monastery in the ways they use to motivate disciplines; it's possible D'avin had been scared, back then. Either way, by the next sentence he speaks his mind caught up with his instincts: "Not everyone is as hard as you, Dutch," he says - _hard_ and not _strong,_ despite that it's a plea for Dutch to remember others' vulnerability and dependence on her.

D'avin is an experienced soldier, no stranger to injury or gore - yet back in s01e02 _The_ _Sugar Point Run_ , he responded first in admiration as Dutch dislocated her joints to slide out of the bonds she was put it, then in shock as Dutch made no move to help or comfort Simon as he died and plunged her hands into his flesh, seemingly with no awareness that _this was a human being_ until seconds before. In s01e03 _The Harvest_ Dutch left Vincent's crew to die - indeed, never made an offer to rescue them. Dutch is ruthless, and by this episode D'avin has already witnessed that. He's also witnessed Dutch take on considerable risk to save his life, when even Johnny considered giving up on him ("Maybe [D'avin] did earn that warrant"); take a warrant she didn't want to, because Johnny asked, and it was for his friend; give Pawter a ride, because D'avin asked, though she dislikes Pawter enough to refuse her on her own; rescue all the monastery girls, not just Constance; then risk Delle Seyah's wrath rather than abandon them. In all these instances, Dutch did not act ruthlessly, and not because she couldn't. In fact, the ruthless choices would've been pragmatic, safer and logistically simpler - and each time, Dutch chose kindness instead.

"You came out the other side clean," D'avin tells Dutch at the end of s01e04 _Vessel_ : "Don't you ever dare think otherwise." In the beginning he had to trust Dutch or die, and they both know it. They both know the weight of that, too: it's part of why Dutch warned him she's capable of turning on anyone, at any time. And just like Dutch didn't have to make the warning explicit, so D'avin doesn't need to say out loud: _Now that I can afford to, now that I had time to study you, this time I choose to trust you._  

 

* * *

 

"Never let it be you," Khlyen had told the girl Yalena when he gave her the choice to kill or be killed. He raised her and conditioned her for utter ruthlessness that way. She also internalized the pain of helplessness and to never let _that_ be her, either; just as she learned that to be capable of harming another gives her power, and realizing that harm moreso.

In episode s01e03 _The Harvest_ , Dutch threatened Martel with electro-burning should he fail to comply. She also said she'd feel better for having hurt him - and she wasn't being figurative. In s01e07 _Kiss Kiss Bang Bang_ , she offered Jaeger the choice between death and execution with the intention of doing to Jaeger the opposite of what she chose: Dutch _wanted_ to see the horror and helplessness on Jaeger's face, even explicitly said she was there to hurt the other woman. And in s01e09 _Enemy Khlyen_ Dutch didn't hold a needle to her vein only as leverage for an interrogation, but because she wanted to hurt Khlyen and make him feel as utterly helpless. To act with intent to harm, to hurt, to undercut another person's agency and make them feel powerless, to enjoy all of these - it isn't only ruthlessness that Dutch is capable of but  _cruelty,_ and when she chooses it she does so to comfort herself.

There's no indication Khlyen _meant_ to teach her sadistic pleasure, but it's clear he wouldn't object to anything that makes Dutch enjoy her skills and put them to use, so long as she doesn't let it get out of hand and become an end in and of itself. He didn't mean to teach her cruelty, but it was there for her to learn. He didn't mean to teach her tenderness either, but she chose to keep it anyway; he never taught her respect, but Dutch learned it from the negative space just as she did kindness. It takes an immense strength of will for a woman who was so ruthlessly trained to never let "it" be her to risk herself for someone else's sake, time and again. Khlyen is wrong when scoffs she's let what he taught her atrophy, but then, if there's anything about Dutch Khlyen doesn't understand it's not her compassion, but her agency. 

When Dutch acts kindly, it's not because she's "still" kind, "despite" everything that was done to her and that she had done. Similarly, when she acts ruthlessly or cruelly it's not "just" because of the "training" she was put through. All these options are Dutch's, now; she owns all of these, all of those possibilities about herself. Her kindness doesn't undo her cruelty, and her cruelty doesn't detract from her kindness. This apparent contradiction doesn't make Dutch weaker; if anything, it makes the strength of her personality all the more breathtaking.

 

* * *

 

When Pawter chooses to stay with Alvis' group in the bombed-out Old Town in _s01e10 Escape Velocity_ , it's the first time we see her assume responsibility of her life. We don't know why she went to medical school; we know she was exiled to Westerly because she'd used drugs during surgery, and it ended badly. We know she's an addict; real-world experience tells us there is no addiction without an internalized, overwhelmingly powerful experience of misery - usually brought about in childhood. We also know Pawter is an abuser (she owns up to a pattern of having sexual relationships with her patients, specifically the "broken" and vulnerable ones) and that abusive behavior, like addiction, is associated with a disregard for boundaries and a tendency to lay blame outside of oneself.

We know that Dutch doesn't like Pawter - or rather, we're told that. The only evidence to back this statement is in the negative space of the lack of interaction between them: note we never see her seeking medical treatment from the doctor, and not because she's never injured. This dislike makes it curious that Dutch didn't intervene on the matter of Pawter and D'avin. Or rather, it makes that _more_ curious, as Dutch is protective and pro-active about people's in general (let alone her team specifically). Yet, the only time she verbally comments (s01e06 _One Blood_ ) is in a vaguely-approving way, and if she resented D'avin bringing Pawter as a passenger in s01e03 _The Harvest_ then there's no evidence of it. It's possible Dutch only refrains from interfering between D'avin and Pawter because she's painfully aware of the power  _she_ has, and that she could make D'avin break up a relationship - any relationship, not necessarily this one - by making her disapproval known.

Johnny's behavior on the matter requires explanation as well. There's no indication of Johnny's literally-lethal protectiveness of people's boundaries in the way he treats Pawter after her "breakup" with D'avin. Then again, Johnny doesn't usually have any illusions about whether or not he can fix something; perhaps that applies to fixing people as well, and the way he treats Pawter is deliberate. Granted, he wasn't aware of Pawter's addiction before s01e08 _Come the Rain_ , but her relationships with her patients are a pattern, and one of which he was likely aware, at least to some degree.

Johnny doesn't usually misjudge whether he can fix something and indeed, the first indication that Pawter is capable of - is interested in - learning better appears in context of her relationship with Johnny. That she lets of of D'avin in s01e07 _Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,_ hardly counts in her favour, as she did it under protest and only after she attempted to shift the blame to D'avin and shame him. But in s01e08 _Come the Rain_ , when Johnny - who's spent the entire night taking care of her and otherwise giving of himself - reveals to her she's not the first addict he took care of, all she does is to tell him, firmly and without hesitation, to _go home._


End file.
